This article is the second in a series of articles which will help you prepare your family file for better use with the upcoming Legacy 7.5 and its interface with FamilySearch. Even if you do not plan on synchronizing your data with FamilySearch, these articles will provide valuable insights on cleaning up and standardizing your data. Click here for the first article.

Potential Problems tool.

In our first article we stated "before interfacing with FamilySearch's new Family Tree system, we should all take a closer look at our data." If your data has problems similar to the cartoon's, and you publish this data online, the data online now has these same problems. So before you publish your data anywhere, use Legacy's Potential Problems tool. Using this tool, Legacy runs through your family file and checks the information for some common and sometimes unnoticed discrepancies.

In Legacy, the Potential Problems tool is located by going to:

Tools > Potential Problems.

Select which records to check

The first time you use the Potential Problems tool, you should have it check all the records in the family file. To do this, make sure that on the Records tab, the first option is selected:

Normal check of all records.

Before clicking on the Create Problems List button in the upper right, look at the Warnings, Problems, Standardization, and LDS (if LDS options are turned on) tabs. Each tab shows you which potential problems Legacy will look at. Here's what the Warnings tab looks like (click on image to enlarge):

Notice that each option is selectable, in other words, if you only want to check your family file for persons who were buried 30 days after their death, select that option, and turn off all the other checkmarks. You can also adjust the values. For example, by default Legacy will warn you if a child was born when the parents were less than 13 years old. You can change this to 10 years old or whatever value makes sense for you.

Here's the Problems tab:

Here's the Standardization tab:

And here's the LDS tab:

Now click on the Create Problems List button (no this will not "create" problems, it will create the list of problems).

The image below shows a list of potential problems. The first problem is that Kenneth Brown's birth date is more than 20 years after the marriage date of the parents. Although not the norm, this may very well be true for this child. If so, just click on the Mark as Not a Problem button, and this potential problem will not show up again. But it may be worth looking at, so using the Edit buttons on the right you can investigate further.

Another problem listed is the Nathaniel Clark's children are not sorted in chronological order. This may not seem like a big problem, but clicking on the Edit Children button showed this:

Asa Clark, born 12 Feb 1742

Abel Clark, born 24 Jan 1742

Caleb Clark, born 26 Nov 1744

...8 more children

This certainly looks like a potential problem, and before sharing this data with FamilySearch or anywhere else, you should reinvestigate this family.

Narrow your focus

My personal database has information on lots of people that are not closely related to me (8th cousins, 4 times removed, etc.). To begin, I want to focus my clean-up efforts on my direct line.

From the Records tab, I can limit the records being checked to those with a certain "Tag" number. For example, I can mark everyone on my direct line with a tag value of 1. Then I can have the Potential Problems tool only report problems of people on my direct line. For step-by-step instructions on how to use tagging, watch this video.

You're now closer to being ready to successfully work with Legacy 7.5 and the new FamilySearch system. Hopefully the potential problems report doesn't give you too many surprises. But if it does, you'll be better prepared to share your information with others.

Comments

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The potential problems, find duplicates, and the county verify were amazingly helpful when I switched from FTM to Legacy. Legacy found so many problems in my file that FTM never picked up on. Most of them were stupid errors that were easily fixed but still. I run all three about once a month just to keep a running check of what is going on in my file.

Personally, I find these articles on preparing for interfacing with nFS nothing short of torturous (sp?) ... [grin] I can hardly wait until the release. I especially appreciate your advice to "narrow my focus" as I, too, have a lot of people in my personal database that have identified as I undertook descendancy research.

I hope someone else besides me has as big a job with this task. It took me all day to fix the Master Location file and this project will be several days in the chair in front of the computer. Thanks for keeping us "cleaned up" and I know it's a necessary evil....I've seen the new Family Search and I can't wait until non LDS can have access to it.

Have I missed something here? You are updating Legacy to interface with nFS so I can upload my research information for free, I have no access to the information or other info, and when I might possibly get access I will have to pay!

Call me crazy but I will not hand off my family information for the benifit of people who will not share what they have with me or the will charge me when they see fit to share. My hard work has value.

I agree with the post by "Larry" "I will not hand off my family information for the benefit of people who will not share what they have with me. My hard work has value." Beside the fact that I can't afford the exorbitant amount nFS charges for their information which by the way is done by individuals on their own in the church who are required to do their genealogy. They submit it to FS and information is enter via volunteers.

The LDS Church never, I repeat NEVER charges people to look at their information. It is all free. Now it may be a case where you have to go to a Family History Center to look at some information, but there is not a charge. The only thing they charge for is shipping and handling for microfilm or microfiche and some pamphlets like research guides and that is only to cover printing costs.

I use the Individual Report function to print
all my info on family members. My question : Is there a way to print not all the members on file but only those individuals where information was altered during the current (or maybe from a previous selected date) session? This function could be very helpfull where one has a large number of records to scroll through to select only the updated files to print.

Let me add my two bits to this discussion. I will also reiterate that NO LDS SITE EVER charges for the information gleaned from it. As the director of an LDS Family History Centre I can assure you that there is NEVER a charge for information. The very modest charge to get films or fiche into the centre for viewing no way covers the cost of mailing. Most of the films we get in come from the States (to Australia) and are then returned to Sydney and all that is requested is a $AU5 fee. All information on new.familysearch is there for the taking and it won't be long before the general public will have access. We are testing the beta edition right now (again!) as we want it to be trouble free when it is released. Believe me, it is incredible, but only because many people have donated time and research results. And, by-the-way, we are not REQUIRED (which smacks of compulsion) to do our genealogy, those of us who do are committed to it because of our belief in the importance of it. And many non-members have submitted their family trees because they can see the value of sharing. Hope you have wonderful success at linking up your research with what is already on n.fs when it is released shortly, Crystal.

If one buys Legacy 7.0 now, will the soon-to-be-released Legacy 7.5 be available as a free download or CD? I've noted Windows PC's still being sold with Vista...but with a free upgrade to Win.7. Will it be like that with Legacy 7.5? Or, would it be better to continue with my free Standard edition until Legacy 7.5 comes out, to avoid paying twice within a few months..? I gather from forum posts that there will be no charge to use the new FamilySearch system. That'd be great.

There is a check for finding "Middle Initials without a period", but if Legacy can do that, can't the next step of fixing them be automated as well? I have 10,000 and that would take months to fix by hand.
Thanks

A question about the "problem finder".
You put on the website :
Another problem listed is the Nathaniel Clark's children are not sorted in chronological order. This may not seem like a big problem, but clicking on the Edit Children button showed this:

I hope someone else besides me has as big a job with this task. It took me all day to fix the Master Location file and this project will be several days in the chair in front of the computer. Thanks for keeping us "cleaned up" and I know it's a necessary evil....I've seen the new Family Search and I can't wait until non LDS can have access to it.
+1